Tag: transparency

Judge in South Carolina Shocks Leftists with Bombshell Ruling: Voter Rolls Are Public Record Under Federal Law

In a landmark ruling, a federal judge in South Carolina has declared that voter rolls are public records and must be made available for inspection by election integrity advocates, a decision that could set a precedent nationwide.

The ruling, issued by Judge Joseph F. Anderson Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to election integrity.

PILF sought access to the South Carolina Statewide Voter Registration List under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, which mandates that states maintain accurate voter rolls and make records available for public inspection.

The SEC initially denied the request.

The SEC argued that South Carolina law only permitted access to these records by qualified electors of the state, not by out-of-state organizations like PILF.

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Lack of Transparency Surrounding U.S. Government’s Former UAP Office Director Raises Concerns

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) cannot explain why the former Director of its Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) office’s prior involvement with UAP was not disclosed to the media and public at the time of his appointment or during his tenure.

Recently, the DoD confirmed to Liberation Times that in 2018, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former Director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), attended a meeting on the Hill about Skinwalker Ranch—famed for its ties to UAP.

A DoD spokesperson told Liberation Times:

‘Dr. Kirkpatrick had no involvement with Skinwalker Ranch.  He attended one meeting on it on the Hill in 2018, which he has publicly acknowledged.’

Liberation Times asked the DoD why Dr. Kirkpatrick’s attendance was never previously made public and whether he had disclosed this fact before his appointment to the AARO.

In response, a DoD spokesperson stated:

‘We cannot comment on the interviews that occur during the hiring process, including what was or was not discussed during them.

‘We do not comment on internal discussions and deliberations between a director and his staff nor between a director and senior officials above him.’

This situation is problematic for the DoD, as the AARO’s creation was supposed to begin a new chapter of transparency regarding the UAP topic within the U.S. government. 

It is unclear whether the blame lies with the DoD for failing to disclose Kirkpatrick’s involvement with the meeting, or with Kirkpatrick himself, who may not have informed the DoD before taking the role.

The situation also calls into question other aspects of Kirkpatrick’s background and AARO’s investigations which may have also been omitted.

His attendance of the meeting was in the public interest and is indicative of Kirkpatrick’s awareness of the topic of UAP before joining AARO. 

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Despite progress in data transparency, the FDA still keeps its data secret

History shows that hiding clinical trial data can be deadly.

Vioxx is a well-known example of how the US drug regulator withheld important information about the harms of the drug for over three years, before it was withdrawn from the market and tens of thousands of people died as a consequence.

Numerous initiatives have been launched over the past two decades to improve access to trial data after it became evident that what was reported in peer-reviewed journals was often cherry-picked and misleading.

Eminent scientists have succeeded in gaining access to trial data from the European and Canadian drug regulators, but a recent analysis published in the Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics, found that the US FDA still lags behind others when it comes to data transparency.

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NIH Refuses To Release Details Of COVID-19 Vaccine Royalty Agreement

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is refusing to release additional information about an agreement it reached over a COVID-19 vaccine that has earned it at least $400 million.

The NIH declined to provide any materials in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Epoch Times.

“The NIH withholds the entirety of the records as they are protected from release,” Gorka Garcia-Malene, an NIH officer, told The Epoch Times in a letter.

She cited an exemption outlined in the act that allows government agencies to partially or fully withhold information.

“In this case, exemption 3 incorporates 35 U.S.C. 209 (f), which reads in relevant part, ‘No Federal agency shall grant any license under a patent or patent application on a federally owned invention unless the person requesting the license has supplied the agency with a plan for development or marketing of the invention, except that any such plan shall be treated by the Federal agency as commercial and financial information obtained from a person and privileged and confidential and not subject to disclosure under section 552 of title 5,’” Ms. Garcia-Malene wrote.

“Exemption 4 protects from disclosure trade secrets and commercial or financial information that is privileged and confidential,” she added.

In February 2023, Moderna announced that it had paid $400 million to the NIH and would make additional payments in the future as part of a licensing agreement for spike proteins used in the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. The Epoch Times obtained a copy of the contract, which confirmed the payment but redacted details of the future payments.

The Epoch Times then lodged a new request, seeking more details about the future payments, which are said to be based on how many COVID-19 vaccines are sold.

Ms. Garcia-Malene was responding to the new request.

James Love, director of the nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International, said the information should be made public.

“The NIH put out several press statements about the royalty dispute with Moderna, and they should not now claim it is some secret confidential information. And when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, the public interest in transparency is large too,” Mr. Love told The Epoch Times in an email.

“There are a lot of NIH officials who resent transparency,” he added.

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Federal Reserve Refuses To Provide Records Of Foreign Gold Holdings

Weeks after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell evaded a sitting congressman’s questions about the central bank’s foreign gold holdings, the Fed has also declined to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for records about such holdings.

The Federal Reserve’s lack of transparency comes amidst reports that countries are removing their gold and other assets from the U.S. in the wake of the unprecedented Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. According to a 2023 Invesco survey, a “substantial percentage” of central banks expressed concern about how the U.S. and its allies froze nearly half of Russia’s $650 billion gold and forex reserves.

Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., asked Powell about the matter in a December letter, only to have the Fed chair respond last month with evasive non-answers, telling him that the Federal Reserve does not own gold but holds it as a custodian for other entities—a fact that the congressman presumably already knew.

Following Powell’s evasive response, Headline USA filed a FOIA request with the Fed for records reflecting how much gold the Federal Reserve Bank of New York currently holds in its vault, as well as records reflecting the ownership stake that each of FRBNY’s central bank/government clients have in that gold. The FOIA request also sought records about the Fed’s gold holdings prior to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

However, the Federal Reserve denied the FOIA request on Wednesday.

“Board staff consulted with staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (‘Reserve Bank’) and have been advised that such records, if they exist, would be Reserve Bank records, and consequently, not subject to the Board’s Rules Regarding Availability of Information,” the Fed said.

The Federal Reserve said that this publication could take its request to the New York Fed. However, that institution isn’t subject to FOIA.

Headline USA is working on an appeal.

Meanwhile, sound-money advocates are blasting the Fed’s lack of transparency.

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Feds Enforcing Unconstitutional Reporting Law Against Most Businesses

Early this month, a federal judge in Alabama held the Corporate Transparency Act unconstitutional and granted plaintiffs in a lawsuit summary judgment against enforcement of the wide-reaching law, which went into effect this year. For many Americans this raises the questions: “What in hell is the Corporate Transparency Act? Does it affect me?” The quick answer is that it’s a big deal, and if you own an incorporated business, you’ll probably still suffer its intrusive requirements even after the ruling.

“When Congress passed the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, it included a bill called the Corporate Transparency Act (‘CTA’). Although the CTA made up just over 21 pages of the NDAA’s nearly 1,500-page total, the law packs a significant regulatory punch, requiring most entities incorporated under State law to disclose personal stakeholder information to the Treasury Department’s criminal enforcement arm,” Judge Liles C. Burke of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama’s Northeastern Division handily summarized in this month’s ruling.

Large businesses are exempt; the law applies to companies with 20 or fewer employees.

Justifications for the law laid out in early versions of the legislation invoked a laundry list of alleged financial horribles including money laundering and tax evasion. The word terrorism appears, too, of course, because that has been the lazy, default justification for legislation for 20-plus years. Basically, the law is targeted at anything that might involve a modicum of financial privacy.

To that end, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) set up an online reporting system through which business owners “are required to report information to FinCEN about the individuals who ultimately own or control them.” FinCEN started compiling reports for such “beneficial ownership information” (BOI) on January 1, 2024 with a deadline for compliance of January 1, 2025, or 30 days after creation for companies registered following that date.

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Without More Accountability, Sunshine Laws Are Toothless

This week is Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of transparency laws, which means that government press offices across the country are hard at work pretending they don’t spend the other 51 weeks a year undermining those transparency laws.

If you want to see what your leaders really think of you and your statutory right to know what they’re up to, just ask them to comply with the open government laws on the books.

Two Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers claimed earlier this month that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office blocked the release of DeSantis’ publicly-funded travel records and retaliated against them for arguing that the records were public under the state’s Sunshine Law.

As I wrote last year for Reason‘s special issue on Florida, politicians have been chipping away at the state’s vaunted public records law for decades, but DeSantis and his allies in the Florida Legislature are taking a sledgehammer to it.

Elsewhere in the Sunshine State, a fire chief called the police because a local reporter had the temerity to insist, correctly, that he had a legal right to inspect public records in person. Tampa Bay Times reporter Jason Garcia showed up at the headquarters of the Tampa Fire Rescue Department asking to see paperwork related to a firefighter’s termination. Florida’s Sunshine Law law is unambiguous on this point: “All state, county and municipal records are open for personal inspection and copying by any person.”

Nevertheless, two department employees, one of whom was the personnel chief, argued Garcia had no right to see the records since he’d already filed a records request online. Eventually, Tampa fire chief Barbara Tripp called the police to report Garcia for causing a disturbance, although he left by the time reinforcements arrived to end his reign of terror.

The personnel chief claimed in a memo that Garcia “persisted in being argumentative and repetitive and refused to accept the answer and leave.” 

“No matter how you want to spin it, though, journalists are supposed to ask questions and seek explanations,” the Tampa Bay Times wrote in an editorial about the alleged hullabaloo. “That may rankle people in power, but it doesn’t constitute an unruly disturbance.”

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The Government Doesn’t Want You To See the Unused Space Force Logos

As Sunshine Week 2024 draws to a close, the Air Force has marked the occasion by hiding the draft designs of logos and uniforms for the Space Force.

Reason filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Air Force in January 2020 for drafts or alternate designs for the logo of the nascent Space Force, one of the Trump administration’s more expensive and whimsical farces.

A quick four years later, the Air Force released 122 pages of communications between the public servants who designed the uniforms, logo, and seal for Star Fleet—excuse me, Space Force.

Unfortunately for everyone who was looking forward to seeing Project Runway: Department of Defense Edition, the Air Force redacted all images of the draft versions, citing Exemption (b)(5) of the FOIA.

Exemption (b)(5) is also known as the “deliberative process” exemption. It protects discussions between bureaucrats about policy decisions, under the reasoning that bureaucrats wouldn’t be as frank if everything they said got dragged into the public eye (by annoying reporters like myself). 

Congress amended the FOIA in 2016 to state that agencies should operate with a “presumption of openness” and only withhold documents when there is a “foreseeable harm,” not out of fear of embarrassment. Despite that, federal agencies still regularly abuse exemptions, especially (b)(5). In this case, the Air Force seems to be claiming that its staff would be afraid to design uniforms if their mock-ups were public. Sorry, but fashion’s a tough business.

All is not lost, though. Some tidbits slipped by the censors.

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5,000 more hours of Jan 6 footage to be released by House Oversight Committee

House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Friday the release of 5,000 additional hours of video from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. 

The additional video, equal to roughly 208 straight days of viewing, is being released by the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee. 

“House Republicans again commend subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk and the entire Committee on House Administration for their ongoing commitment to ensuring that there is full transparency surrounding the events of January 6,” Johnson said.

The release follows Johnson saying in November 2023 that he would make the January 6, 2021, tapes available to the American people and the release of an initial tranche of 90 hours of footage.

There seems to more video in addition to what is being released Friday, with the Administration committee vowing to “continue to release the remaining footage online as expeditiously as possible so that it is accessible to every American.”

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Biden was only told TODAY that Lloyd Austin, 70, had prostate cancer – a month after he was diagnosed: Details of communication failure over secret ICU trip spark more questions for the White House and Pentagon

President Joe Biden was told that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had prostate cancer on Tuesday – the same day the public was informed, sparking more questions about the transparency of the administration and whether the public can trust their government.

‘Nobody at the White House knew that Secretary Austin had prostate cancer until this morning and the President was informed immediately after we were,’ White House spokesman John Kirby said at the daily press briefing. 

Kirby got defensive as he was repeatedly queried about why the commander-in-chief didn’t know the conditions or the where abouts of his top military officer. Austin was diagnosised with cancer a month before his Dec. 22 surgery. He was released the next day and returned to the hosptial via ambulance on Jan. 1 for complications. Biden was told Austin was in the hospital on Jan. 4. 

‘We all recognize that this didn’t unfold the way it should, on so many levels, not just the notification process of the chain of command, but the transparency issue. We all recognize that. And I think we all want to make sure we learn from that,’ Kirby said. 

‘It’s certainly not good, which is why we want to learn from this and we want to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.’

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